


The Feeling of Being in Motion Again

by Birdbitch



Series: Kingdom AU [9]
Category: DCU
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-25
Updated: 2016-06-25
Packaged: 2018-07-18 02:00:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7294948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Birdbitch/pseuds/Birdbitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bruce has been away on a diplomatic mission for too long.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Feeling of Being in Motion Again

**Author's Note:**

  * For [st00pz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/st00pz/gifts).



> Written for the eternally lovely St00pz!  
> Title from The Mountain Goats song, "Going to Georgia."

Sometimes, Dick dislikes being in Gotham. Mostly, it’s during the cold seasons, and it’s even worse when Bruce isn’t there. 

He left at the end of summer and it has felt like ages since he’s been gone. Dick has responsibilities, besides aiding in the management of the king’s council, and it includes the rearing of Bruce’s nephews, Jason and Tim, who were taken in when their parents passed away. Jason can be fun, and Tim’s smart, but the kind of companionship he offers isn’t the kind that Dick really needs, so as much as he enjoys playing cards with them (never chess, since Tim’s brain works better with that kind of strategy than Dick’s does, and if Dick’s being honest, he hates losing), it isn’t, frankly, the same.

“There are rumors that he might not be able to arrive tonight as planned.” Selina Kyle sits next to Dick in the dining hall; dinner that night is sparse. “The snow is getting worse.”

“Then he’ll arrive when he does,” Dick answers. The chat around the dining hall has been winding down for a while now; a good portion of the court has gone to bed. It is, without a doubt, getting late. He rises, as do the remaining members in the hall, and when he waves them off, they all sit back down to continue their talking. Jason is in bed already, and Tim is on his way up, having been escorted there by a member of the guard. 

Dick chooses against an escort and finds himself walking back to his and Bruce’s chambers as though half asleep. According to the clocks, it’s almost midnight. When he gets to the bedroom, fire in the hearth already stoked, it still feels too cold. The snow has pillowed itself against the thin, iron-wrought Gothic windows. He climbs into bed and it’s too big for just him. Maybe Selina is right, and the snow has slowed him down. Bruce should have been back at the castle, back in the court, at least two hours ago. 

He drifts off to the thought, not even realizing it until what feels like a few moments (but must really be a few hours) later when the bed shifts. “You’re in my spot,” Bruce’s voice rumbles and Dick opens his eyes to look at him. His nose still has that frost bitten pink look to it, cheeks are a little chapped, and there’s a wound on his shoulder that wasn’t there when he left. 

“What happened?” He’s awake enough to notice the way it’s been patched up, awake enough to sit up and pull Bruce towards him. 

“I would have been back sooner, but there was an...altercation.” 

“Are you alright?”

“Yes, I’m alright.” He swallows. “I wanted to be home sooner.” 

“Does anyone know you’re here, besides me?”

“They’ll know in the morning.” 

“Oh.” Dick hesitates a moment before leaning up and pressing a kiss against the corner of Bruce’s mouth. “I missed you.” There were moments where he had been away for so long that Dick was worried he might forget the feel of him close by. He was wrong, of course, but the worry still lingered and he presses closer to Bruce now, encourages him to press him into the mattress. 

“Six months can be a long time.” It might have been the closest Bruce would get to admitting that he had missed Dick, too. He kisses his consort, pulls the sheets and bedding up over them. “I could sent for someone to stoke the fire,” he murmurs idly, and Dick frowns before kissing him again.

“Don’t.”

His fingers are already working at what’s left of Bruce’s traveling clothes, the lace of his britches, pushing up the hem of his shirt. Bruce gets the message, shucks his clothes off and out of the bed, and then he presses down against Dick, drawing forward a grown. “Every time I go away and come back, we might as well be on honeymoon again,” Bruce murmurs, and he kisses Dick’s neck, sucks hard enough to leave a bruise.

(Dick knows that there’s a Gotham legend about vampires, and sometimes he’s not so sure he can easily dismiss them, not when it’s a night like tonight and he’s begging for Bruce to do  _ something _ ,  _ anything _ .)

“Bruce,” Dick says, “Can you please--”

“Yes,” he answers, even if the request isn’t clear. He turns Dick onto his stomach, presses against his back, reaches a hand to wrap around Dick’s cock. It takes a little coaxing, but soon he’s hard, and he can feel Bruce is too, when he presses his hips back. 

“It’s been cold without you.”

“I know.” 

“I want you.” Dick doesn’t mind begging. He turns his head to look over his shoulder and Bruce’s chest is flushed. “Please. It’s been six months.” He still knows what to say to get Bruce going. He whimpers at the feel of Bruce’s hands spreading his cheeks, sighs when he knows where it’s going. They have a lot of lost time to make up for. 

(There had been once, the first time when Bruce went away, that he had told Dick it was alright if he wanted to take a lover in his absence. Dick laughed--he can’t imagine this with anybody else, couldn’t imagine it then--and Bruce pressed a kiss against his neck as a reminder that he’d understand, even if he did.)

  
  


The sun hasn’t risen yet, though they’re both aware that it’s probably coming sooner rather than later. Dick rocks down on Bruce, reaches back and lets out a sigh. “Shouldn’t you sleep? They’ll be reconvening soon.” 

“It’s a snow day,” Bruce says, grunts, reaches a hand up to grab one of Dick’s pectorals and squeezes it. “There’s too much snow.”

“Oh,” Dick says, but Bruce isn’t sure if it’s a reaction to the news of a snow day or the sudden upward thrust of his hips. Have they stopped since Bruce has gotten back? Briefly; there was a knock at the door from a guard, and Bruce pulled away from a keening Dick with nothing but one of the fur blankets around his waist to tell him not to knock again.

It hasn’t stopped Dick from wanting to know when, exactly, would be the next time Bruce will be called away to the further reaches of the country, or out of country, or wherever, but it has been a really nice distraction. He feels kissed out, fucked out, and when he does come again, it’s relatively weak, and he slumps forward into Bruce’s waiting arms. “You’ll have to give me a bath,” he says, and Bruce smiles at him, wraps his legs around his waist so he can keep going. 

“Don’t I always?” he asks. Before the day breaks is when he’s at his most vulnerable. It’s a good thing Dick isn’t assassin, he thinks; he knows when he’d be able to get under Bruce’s skin the easiest. Instead, he lets his head fall back, mouth open, eyes shut. Bruce doesn’t say what would happen if anyone else got to see him, especially the way he is now, loose-limbed and covered in kiss marks. 

He finishes, pulls out, lies down next to Dick and holds him. He waits for a moment before asking, “How are they?”

Dick, in a haze, takes a moment to answer. “They’re good. They’ve been good. They’re adjusting.”

“Good. Jason was alone for a while before anyone thought to tell me.”

“So it had been a rebellion.”

Bruce grunts again, this time unwilling to talk about it. That’s why he had gone west in the first place. Whatever it was must have been stopped, or else he would have come home. Dick turns in his arms and touches the bandage, applying little pressure. “Oh, Bruce.”

“Do you want to sleep like this, or should I bring you to the bath?”

“Is it still snowing outside?” 

Bruce doesn’t turn to look. “Yes.”

He thinks for a while, almost falls asleep since he had been exhausted when Bruce first got back, is still exhausted now. “Tim will be awake soon. He doesn’t sleep much.”

Dick can feel Bruce humming against the back of his neck. “He saw his father,” he answers. “It’s difficult to sleep after something like that.” He moves, leaves the bed, and Dick is about to complain until Bruce takes him with him, carries him in his arms and towards the bath. The steam is already coming up, even without the tub having been filled. “This might take a moment,” he tells Dick, who nods his head without saying anything. “I suppose I could say I’m too tired to talk about it, but it’s better to tell you sooner than later.”

“What?”

He fiddles with the faucets, waits for the water to come out in its beautiful teal before adding any of the aromatic soaps. “Kal-El will be visiting before the holidays,” he says. “I was hoping the snow might put him off, but I received a message a few days ago saying that the meeting will continue as planned.”

“You mean the king of Krypton.” Dick slides into the water, and Bruce goes to him. “He’s not a bad guest.”

“I keep worrying he’s going to bring his oldest son.”

“He can’t be that bad,” Dick murmurs. From somewhere, Bruce has produced a loofah that he uses to massage the skin of Dick’s shoulders down to the swell of his rear and then back up. 

“There have been rumors…” Bruce trails off.

Dick isn’t listening. “He’s around Tim’s age. Would it be so bad?” He’s falling asleep in the tub and he knows it, but the water is warm and the smell of the soap is relaxing. The bath is Dick’s favorite part of the entire, otherwise cold, castle. “I was mentioning that Tim will be up soon, and he’ll want to see you went he knows you’re back,” he says, and he yawns.

“I kept you up for too long.”

“If it’s a snow day, it’s a snow day,” he answers. “We have about an hour.”

“If you fall asleep in the tub, I’ll make sure you don’t drown.”

“Thanks, B.”

And the offer is tempting. Dick loves Bruce, loves when he’s making love to him, but marathon sex would wear anybody out, and he hasn’t been sleeping well since the correspondences stopped about two months ago. 

He again doesn’t realize that he’s drifted off until Bruce is lifting him gently out of the tub and drying him off. “Do we have to leave this room?”

“If we go down to the east wing, they’ll have the large fireplace stoked and plenty of blankets.” 

“Let me get dressed in.”

“Someone once told me that the cure to hypothermia is skin-to-skin heat.” From anyone else, it would sound like a corny come-on, but from Bruce? He’s sincere and says it wanting to be closer, sure, but suave. 

Dick takes a step and winces before reaching out for Bruce’s arm. “I think it’s fine if we’re just with everyone else. I can’t really hog you all to myself, can I?”

He can, and maybe at some point, he will, but there’s Jason and Tim to think about. There’s everyone else who will want to welcome the king home, too, but Bruce is a family man at heart and won’t talk to them until he’s had his fill of his closest circle first. It doesn’t take too long for the both of them to dress, to make the walk over to the east wing. 

“There was another thing,” Bruce says before they’re there, and Dick raises an eyebrow at him.

“Yes?”

He watches Bruce fumble with something in his pocket before pulling out a bracelet. “I saw this and thought of you.” He puts it on Dick’s left wrist and lifts his hand to kiss it. 

“That won’t make me forget the correspondence issue.”

“No, it shouldn’t,” he answers. When they enter the sitting room of the east wing, Jason’s reading and Tim is setting up a chess match. Bruce leaves Dick’s side after helping him sit down on the couch and moves to Tim. “I’ve heard that you’ve outmatched Dick.”

“Not outmatched!” Dick argues, but Tim already has a look on his face like he’s happy for Bruce’s praise, and they sit down to play.

Jason looks at Dick, sits next to him. “Did something happen?”

“I’m fine, just a little sore. Fell out of bed.”

“You know,” Jason starts, but then he thinks better of it and goes back to his book. 

“Bruce, when is Kal-El visiting?” Dick asks. 

He frowns and turns away from Tim to look at Dick. “He should be en route now. We’re prepared for an arrival starting tomorrow.”

He hasn’t seen Kal-El since he was younger. They were friends, and he knows that Bruce likes him enough, but recently there have been border disputes and Dick sonders if that’s what the visit is about. It’s warmer in Krypton, he thinks. No snow. Jason is going to try dragging them all out but he’ll have to accept Kyle Rayner as his only partner. Dick knows it already. He’s not a particular fan of snow in the first place, and even with the fire going, he’s still reaching for more blankets. Tim--Tim probably would like throwing snowballs, but he’s still at an age where he wouldn’t want to get them thrown back at him. 

Dick isn’t letting Bruce leave, even for a little while. 

“Do you think there’s too much snow to go riding?” Jason asks, and Dick blinks at him, slow. 

“Everyone has the day off today. Even the horses.”

“Alright, but they’ve got to move anyway or else they get housebound.” 

“Are you talking about the horses or yourself?” Tim asks as he places a pawn down. “Bruce, when Kal-El and his people get here, could I stay for the proceedings?”

“Tim,” Bruce says, like he wants to argue, wants to say, You’re still thirteen, can you act like a kid? But instead, he says, “You can watch, but you can’t state your opinions yet. You’re not officially part of the government.”

It takes a beat before Tim agrees to the conditions, which makes sense. He already sees himself as smarter than half of the adults in the king’s council, and he’s not entirely wrong. “Alright,” he says, and then Bruce puts him in check. 

When Jason finishes his book, he looks around expectantly, waiting for someone to offer to go outside with him, before he sighs. “I guess I’ll ask Kyle.”

“He’s not on today--”

“He’s my friend, Uncle Bruce,” Jason answers, too quick, and then he’s out of the room and heading away towards the barracks. 

“You could have gone out with him,” Dick says to Tim, who wrinkles his nose. He’s already lost the game and he knows it, but he’s still going to prolong it for as long as possible. “Tim.”

“It’s fine,” he says. “I don’t like the snow. I hate being cold. It used to make me sick all the time.” He turns his attention on Dick. “Speaking of sick, are you alright? You had trouble walking down earlier.”

For whatever reason, Tim asking about it makes Dick’s cheeks blush faster and worse than when Jason had. “I startled him out of bed last night,” Bruce says easily, quickly, and Tim looks at him, trying to catch the end of the lie so he can unravel it and find out the truth. He can’t, though, and instead looks at the game board. “Do you want to know what you did wrong?”

“Tell me what I did right, first.”

  
  


“In the spring, we’re going to have to find someone for Jason to marry,” Bruce says as they’re heading up from dinner.

Dick tilts his head to look at him, frowns. “Why?”

“The west is too unstable, and if we can get him back on the seat of his house, it’ll be much better if he has a spouse.”

“Are you mad that he’s been spending time with Kyle Rayner?”

“I wasn’t aware they had a friendship in the first place.”

“Jason doesn’t know?”

Bruce hangs his head. “He’ll be the one who makes the decision. It won’t--it’s arranged, but both parties have to agree.” He wipes a hand over his face. “We need to wait to tell him. Let him keep--having fun.”

Dick doesn’t look at Bruce, but instead keeps walking forward, gives a polite nod to the guard who opens the door for them. (It seemed funny, when they first were married, that a man like Bruce need a guard, but then, Dick might have once thought the same of his own father, and, well, they both knew how that ended.) “Bruce,” he says, and the king is there immediately, kneeling before him, pressing a kiss to his knuckles. “Bruce,” he says again, and he grazes his hand on the underside of Bruce’s chin to encourage him to stand up. “Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

“When I started to, you had fallen asleep in the tub. I hadn’t even realized it.” 

“Oh.”

And, because he doesn’t feel like fighting this time (for a royal couple that’s been happily married, they sure have a lot of blow ups), he reaches up to Bruce’s shoulder and holds onto him. “It’s the best plan of action,” Bruce says, lifting Dick and setting him into bed. “I wouldn’t suggest it if I thought there was anything else that could be done.”

Dick knows this, and he doesn’t say anything. Maybe Bruce wants him to try to argue, try to make him come up with something else. If he looks out of the windows of the castle, he’ll see the courtyard where Jason and Kyle are still throwing snowballs at each other. 

“I’m glad you’re back,” Dick says finally, and Bruce’s shoulders relax. 

“I’m glad I’m back, too,” he says, and he settles in next to Dick, pressing a kiss against his cheek.


End file.
